


After the Storm

by Ophelia Coelridge (daemonluna)



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon
Genre: Death, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1997-01-02
Updated: 1997-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-14 05:20:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daemonluna/pseuds/Ophelia%20Coelridge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haruka had a brother, once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted to alt.fan.sailor-moon, circa 1997. Archived here out of nostalgia, despite excessive use of adjectives.

I stand at the night-dark window. Rain like tears streak down the black ice of the wet glass. I rest my forearm against it; the smooth surface is cool to the touch. My breath mists unevenly against the slick windowpane, as my reflection stares back at me, a solemn, watery stare. I raise a hand to my face, but find my eyes dry still. It has been many years since I last cried. I think I've forgotten how. And as the heavens weep in my place, I hear her stirring drowsily.

"Haruka?" she calls, voice thick with sleep. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I answer softly, levely. "Go back to sleep, love." The bed creaks, and then she is there beside me, no matter how even I held my voice. One slender hand reaches out and brushes my cheek, a moth's wing caress. She says nothing. She doesn't need to. And then, because she understands, she turns, goes back to bed, and lets me be. Leaves me alone with my ghosts.

* * *

I wanted to be just like him. Everyone loved him, my brother. Half- brother. I idolized him. When he let me, I followed his every step, trailing at his heels like a small puppy. You must understand, I was only six years old at the time. I can hear him yet. "Go on home, Tag-Along." That's what he called me. I suppose it's only fair since that's what I was. When I look back, I'm surprised he had the patience he did, as I tended to cling, limpet-like to my idol. I lived for those times, warming myself in his glory. And I would trail behind him for a time, but eventually he'd tire of the game, and send me back home, patting me on the head like a small animal. Go on home, Tag-Along. Again he'd be off with his friends, long legs outdistancing me easily, turning back to wave, with a smile in his kindly cruelty. But he could charm the very buds on the trees to burst into bloom, he could, and when he did smile, I'd give my arm, my leg, my life itself for that smile to be for me. That was before he tore our world apart.

* * *

I swore years before I'd never trust, never love again. And then I met her. Bit by bit, stone by stone, she wore away my defenses, the swift-moving current against the hardest granite. And she opened my eyes, and I saw that she loves me, and that I love her. I look over at the still hump that is Michiru, beneath the blankets. I know she is awake. But I also know that she will feign sleep as long as I stand here, brooding. And when--if I return to bed this night, she will finally settle into true sleep next to me, with that weary, trusting sigh of too many sleepless nights.

* * *

The rain still falls, unceasingly streaming past my window. I see only the monster I killed tonight. We had expected the usual daimon, Michiru and I. Bizarre and unthinking, unfeeling. Only there to serve its master's command. But the monster that looked up at me, squinting through the murky night, it had a face that had once been human. For a small eternity, I could not breathe.

* * *

"Kill me now," it pleads. I look into the upturned face of the thing that had once been my brother. It still has his eyes. I don't want to know how he got here, what dark power warped him beyond belief into this... thing that asks its death from me. No one ever thought to ask what would happen if a daimon seed met human flesh. And the countless other daimons we destroyed, were they once someone else's brother, lover, child, friend? Or the next best thing to an inanimate object, only after a pure heart? We'll find no pure hearts here, in this darkened alley. There is nothing here that is pure, nothing but grief, regret, and pain, as I face the monster that was my brother. He knows me. I see it in those unchanged eyes. There is no room there for fear, or scorn, or even amazement, that his baby sister is a Sailor Senshi. There is only room for the pain.

"World... shaking!" I say, the familiar words coming automatically, though my voice is rough with pain, and my throat tight with unshed tears. And my world shudders, and shakes, and falls to pieces around me, just as it did that night so many years ago.

* * *

I can still hear their voices, echoing from the past. Some things never really leave you, and the sounds of that night will play themselves out in my memory until my dying day. Once again, I am six years old. I huddle in the back of the closet, behind the winter coats and aging rubber boots, a wiry scrap of a child. And in the kitchen, the voices rage. My world is shaking, and the foundations crack. My mother, who loves him just as I do, her shining, fair- haired boy, she tells him to leave. And never come back. My brother, my sun and stars, has just blacked her eye. She found the gun, and the money. I don't know where he got it. I don't think I want to, need to, even now. It was in the sock drawer, the gods only know why. And she's realized that her angel is a fallen angel.

"Why?" she had said, lips white. "Didn't I give you anything, everything I could?" And he had laughed, and told her not to worry, that he'd just done a favor for a friend, that was all, everything was fine. She called him a liar. That was when he hit her. And that was when I ran, for the dubious safety of the coat closet. I don't think they even knew I was there.

I can see them, through the slatted door, my bright-blazing sun and the solid earth beneath my feet, at war. And now, I hear my mother.. hear her...

"You're just like your father!" She throws it in his face, and he falls back as if she had hit him.

"No," he says, in the voice of a little boy, a tremulous cry, a plea. Say it's not so. "No!" His cry catches in his throat, almost a sob. He raises the gun, that he had held so casually before. It wavers in his shuddering grip.

"He hit me, and then he hit you, and I left him, but you are your father's son now!" Her voice is as harsh as the raven's, echoing a doomsday prophecy. His face crumples spasmodically, and his finger convulses on the trigger. The gunshot is louder than the loudest thunder, and there is nothing left of the world I knew as my mother dies at his feet. He runs, leaving me here, and when the police come, they find me kneeling in my mother's blood, crying for the last time.

I shed all my tears that unthinkable night, stood dry-eyed through the funeral, and the long days and weeks afterwards, when I was sent to my father, who was not my brother's father. And I joined the world of the living again, tackled it head-on. But I brought my ghosts with me, staining my stony heart. And to this day, I will not cry.

* * *

And I see my brother's eyes, just as they were this night, and I see him die. He looks... relieved. As if death has come, not as a thief, a dark hand in the night, but as a benediction, a blessing to cleanse the profane. He looks as if he has finally found forgiveness. Once again, I am left behind. He has his peace, but where is mine?

* * *

Now, as the rain washes down the blackened glass, all the anger, all the countless whys, the old, old pain rises up, choking me, clawing at my throat as it pulls me down. And I fight, as I always fight, striking out at my ghosts. And then... and then I stop. The wave of sorrow, the hate, and the fear, it engulfs me. And I am drowning. Until... until there is only the empty night, and the rain, streaking the windowpane endlessly. The tight knot that ties my throat shatters, and the shards tear me to pieces inside, and make me anew. As I let go of the past, I start to cry. And she is there with me, her arm around me as I shake. I am not alone.

"Hush, now, hush." Michiru rocks me gently, as if I were a small child in her arms. They are dead. But I am not. I will never forget, but my ghosts need not haunt me any more. The voices are a bare muttering now. They fade, and are gone. And in the arms of my beloved, the past in its grave, and the tears still wet on my cheeks, together we sit. And we watch the rain.


End file.
